AZTECS HOPE FOR SOFT LANDING AGAINST WYOMING
AZTECS FOCUSED ON ‘W’ AGAINST WYOMING

Wyoming at No. 24 Aztecs

Today: 7:30 p.m., Viejas Arena

On the air: 4SD, The Mtn., 600-AM, 95.7-FM

Midway through practice Monday afternoon, James Rahon crashed to the Viejas Arena court with an audible thud. Play instantly stopped and a half-dozen teammates rushed to his assistance, reaching down and helping him to his feet.

Several of them said at once: “You OK?”

It is a common refrain these days on Montezuma Mesa, both said and unsaid, articulated and internalized. Are the Aztecs OK?

The last time San Diego State played Wyoming, a month ago in Laramie, it took 20 hours on a cramped 19-seat turboprop, two refueling stops and an unscheduled overnight in Utah to get there. The Aztecs finally arrived a few hours before tipoff, missed their shootaround at Arena-Auditorium and instead had an impromptu walk-through in a hotel ballroom. They won 52-42.

Tonight, they’ll merely have to walk out of their campus apartments and down a hill to Viejas Arena to face the Cowboys. Might take five minutes, 10 tops.

And this might be the tougher challenge, the taller order. A month later the Aztecs suddenly look like the team that just landed from a harrowing adventure through the mountains in the dead of winter, weary from the travel, rattled by the turbulence.

“We obviously hit a rough patch,” coach Steve Fisher said.

The 24th-ranked Aztecs (20-6, 6-4) are no longer playing for a conference championship — or at least not realistically, trailing New Mexico by a game and a half with four to play. They aren’t playing for a spot in the Top 10 of the national polls, having fallen from No. 13 a week ago. The focus is no longer the wide expanse of landscape out the front windshield; it’s what they might hit immediately past the nose of the hood.

Fisher and his players sounded optimistic that they would have Jamaal Franklin, their leading scorer and rebounder who sat out Saturday’s ugly 58-56 loss at Air Force with a sprained left ankle. On Monday, Franklin was able to jog and shoot. On Tuesday, he participated in half-court, non-contact drills and Fisher declared him a “maybe.”

Garrett Green, who replaced Franklin in the starting lineup Saturday only to sprain his right ankle, is less certain. He walked through some plays at practice Tuesday but appears to be a day or two behind Franklin and was labeled “doubtful” by Fisher.

In Wyoming (18-8, 4-6), the Aztecs get a team that has also lost three straight. But they get a team that prefers a slow tempo, keeps the possessions to a minimum, tries to make you play 30 seconds of defense, tries to shorten the game and reduce your margin for error. In 25 of 26 games this season, the Cowboys have held opposing teams under their scoring average.

Sound familiar? It’s what Air Force did Saturday, and the Aztecs were helpless to do much about it.